Alice Springs
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2008
1
13
76
Trip End
Jun 25, 2009
Alice Springs,
South Australia,
Australia
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Alice Springs itself is just a smallish dusty place with lots of simillar problems to Coober Pedy however it does have a much nicer city center ( a bit like fargate back home) There is quite a lot to do, the history is interesting as is the way of life such as the flying doctor and the school of the air which was really interesting!!
On our first night we experienced our first lighting storm. They are just fantastic but loud and the sky just lights up. It's incredible. We survived though and so did the tent!!
The best part about visiting Alice Springs was seeing the Macdonnel ranges. There are some beautiful sites along the way from Stanley Chasam to Ellery Creek where James tested the water for about 3 seconds and then scrambled out incase there were some sharks around or should I say croccodiles!! The landscape is just incredible I can't describe it !
From Alice Springs we moved to Uluru to see the big Rock!! Our first glimpse of the rock well what I thought was the rock was not actally the rock at all!! Any way we arrived at the campsite to be greated by not Wallabies but Dingoes this time!! I have to say not my favourite of the Astralian creatures.
Uluru- when you first see the real thing it does have a sense of awsomenesss about it!! Which is quite a strange feeling! It is amazing!! The sunrise and sunset thing is a bit of an outing with everyone else lined up with their cars sitting and waiting it's not quite as romantic as I thought it would be and you can't see it from the campsite either! But it was well worth going to visit. I'm glad I did!! We went on a ranger led walk around part of the base aswell which was really informative, especially about the aboriginal way of life and how only 40 years ago did proper communication begin to happen to encourage a mutual respect. 40 years ago!! It should have happened a long time ago. It really does look different from every angle as you walk around the base and I was just amazed by the surface of it , it really is smooth!!
Kata Tjuta or the Olgas is spectacular as well! The walk to the valley of the winds is beautiful and a definate highlight for James.
Kings Canyon was our next stop and that was an event for all the wrong reasons. We had another storm which stranded us on the campsite with everyone else. We couldn't get through the main road due to the level of the water. At one point it rose to 2m above the level of the road. Anyhow we made the most of it and treated ourselves to a meal at the restaurant and had our first taste of kangaroo and emu. mmmmmm!! Oh and we got mobbed by a coach of koreans and their cameras, they are so funny. So Kings Canyon we never made it which is a shame!!
